A gripping new psychological thriller from the author of the international bestseller Before I Go to Sleep.
How well can you really know another person? And how far would you go to find out the truth about them?
When Julia learns that her sister has been violently killed, she knows she must get to the bottom of things. Even if it means jeopardising her relationship with her husband and risking the safety of her son. Getting involved with a stranger online. Losing control.
Perhaps losing everything.
Set in Paris and London, Second Life is about the double lives people leadand the dark places they can end up in. Tense and unrelenting, it is another brilliant novel from S. J. Watson.
Second Life
Julia Plummer has a wonderful life- she's married to a surgeon with a teenage son and a small photography business on the side. She's the picture of happiness.
That happiness is short-lived.
She returns home from visiting an art gallery to be informed that her estranged sister, Kate, has been murdered in Paris. A violent and senseless act. Struggling to cope with her loss, Julia embarks on a mission to find out who killed her sister...and why. It's a journey that forces her to look into the deepest parts of her soul, dragging her innermost secrets into the harsh light of day.
In an effort to stay connected to her sister in some way, Julia reaches out to Kate's room-mate Anna, who becomes a close friend and sounding board for her theories about Kate's death and who is responsible. After Anna confesses Kate frequented online dating sites, Julia embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse, jeopardising not only her own safety but that of her family.
Deliciously dark and gritty, Julia's self-destructive downward spiral and obsession with solving her sister's murder is riveting reading. S. J. Watson has crafted a masterful modern thriller that twists in and around itself right up until the very end.
QBD, 02/03/2015
Another thought-provoking page-turner.
“I realize with sudden clarity that we’re wearing masks, all of us, all the time. We’re presenting a face, a version of ourselves, to the world, to each other. We show a different face depending on who we’re with and what they expect of us. Even when we’re alone, it’s just another mask, the version of ourselves we’d prefer to be.”
Second Life is the second novel by the acclaimed author of Before I Go To Sleep, S.J.Watson. When her sister, Kate is murdered in a Paris alleyway, happily married London photographer, Julia Plummer is devastated. She feels acutely that she has let her sister down, and is determined to uncover the facts. The box of Kate’s effects she has been given by Kate’s flatmate, Anna, lead her to question what she knew about her sister: she soon finds herself risking everything she holds dear in an online relationship with someone who could be the murderer. “There’s a point where an online dalliance might become dangerous, but who can really say when it is?”
After a decidedly slow start, Watson once again gives the reader a gripping tale with a plot full of tension that twists and turns multiple times before reaching a shattering climax. His cast of characters is believable, although many have secrets and some are definitely not what they first seem. Quite unlike Watson’s protagonist in Before I Go To Sleep, this narrator will exasperate readers with her naïveté, her more-than-occasional stupidity and her self-absorbed state of mind; her selfishness, too, will leave the reader gasping.
This is a psychological thriller that graphically illustrates the dangers to be found online, where no one is necessarily what they appear or claim to be. It demonstrates how, once you dispatch it by email or social media, you lose control over any image or piece of information. Today’s technology means almost anything can be faked and makes the potential for extortion of the unwary virtually limitless. Another thought-provoking page-turner.
4.5 stars
Marianne, 25/02/2015
